HISTORY. The CU Mini Med School, founded at the University of Colorado Denver in 1989 by the Office of Public Relations and myself, has received national attention in articles in publications ranging from the Journal of NIH Research and the New York Times to Family Circle.

Since then, about 75 other medical schools and universities have contacted us for information, so it must be an idea whose time has come. In fact, even the National Institute of Health started its own version a few years ago.

In Colorado, other groups have started mini schools in physics, law and evolutionary biology. Broadening the topic and involving the entire University of Colorado system, very successful "Mini Colleges" have been presented in Aspen, Beaver Creek (Vail), and Grand Junction.

AUDIENCE. You need to personalize your program and know who your target audience is and who your prospective lecturers might be. We had planned originally to invite a group of people identified as potential donors, volunteers, supporters, etc., but a local newspaper ran the story ("Have You Always Wanted to Know what Your Doctor Knows?"), and we had more than a thousand applicants before even a mailing was done.

The people who attend the eight-week program, do so for three reasons: They are genuinely interested in learning about health care; they have a particular disease and want to ask questions about it; or they are coming because it sounds interesting and it is free. Several years ago, a newspaper ran an article featuring a very bright 12-year-old girl who came to all the classes; afterwards, we were swamped with requests from high school and middle school students.

SUBJECTS. This is not a course of clinical lectures. We present something that only a medical school can: basic science as it relates to medicine. Some schools have just packaged a random assortment of lectures and called it a mini med school, but it isn’t. We survey what a medical student learns during the first two years of an American or Canadian medical school.

In our first series, topics were cell biology, biochemistry and metabolism, molecular biology and genetic engineering, immunology, virology, neurosciences, endocrinology, and oncology. In response to audience feedback, topics in the second series of classes were anatomy and physiology, cell biology, molecular biology and genetics, immunology, virology, neurosciences, endocrinology, and cancer. In the third series, neurosciences was replaced with human development because the medical school dean, who's a pediatrician, wanted to talk. In the fourth and subsequent sessions, we have gone back to neurosciences. Endocrinology was replaced by pharmacology, which was a very popular choice.

TEACHERS. The teachers, all volunteers, make or break the program. The lecturers are either PhDs or MDs, who have to be able to explain things in simplified, but not condescending language. This requires good judgment and lots of experience; in general the teachers who have been faculty members for awhile are better.

It is no good to say, "Retinoblastoma's etiology involves the inactivation of an anti-oncogene."  It's just as bad to say, "Retinoblastoma happens when the good genes are outnumbered by the bad genes." You have to be able, if possible, to say instinctively, "Retinoblastoma is caused by the loss of both copies of a gene whose role seems to be to prevent tumors" and go on to consider why in the world evolution would have provided such genes and, more amazingly, others that actually cause cancer. The audience has to share in the excitement.

In our large hall, slides are the only really useful audiovisual aid, and we make a budget available to the speakers to prepare really excellent ones. I discourage slides that the speaker uses in his or her regular research talks because they're too technical, and there's usually too much data on them.

All the slides I use are made expressly for Mini Med School. I use images from Time Magazine (pictures of the team that did the first human gene therapy), Scientific American, Netter's atlases and text books; and I make a lot from Web page downloads and in PowerPoint and Flash. For the anatomy and physiology talk, I bring a skeleton (reassuring the audience that it's plastic) and use him as a prop.

Humor helps a great deal, too. We entertain, but we also make the audience work hard to follow the concepts. At each lecture, we provide them with a hand-out and a one-page bio of the speaker.

SCHEDULE. Lectures start at 7 p.m. and last until about 8 p.m., followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session. I try to introduce all talks that I’m not actually giving. Coffee, punch or hot cider and cookies are provided in the hour before the lecture, and the speaker is there to answer questions or just chat.

On the last day, a graduation party is held and everyone is given a diploma.

DISTANCE LEARNING. In the sixth series, held in the fall of 1995, Grand Junction, Colo., was added as a second site. There was a sophisticated two-way video link to our auditorium, and the audience there could see the speaker, slides and Denver audience. An image of the person with a question was projected on our screen so all the people in the Denver audience could see him or her. It went superbly well with more than a dozen technical people at the first session to ensure success. This cost a lot of money, but it is a measure of the school's appreciation of the program. There were 400 people in the audience in Denver, and 100 more in Grand Junction.

Since the fall of 1996, the program has been sent simultaneously to four remote Colorado sites: Grand Junction or Montrose, Alamosa, Greeley, and Pueblo. It is important for our school, the only one in a vast area, to do as much "outreach" as possible to the rural population.

The cost is currently about $25,000/year; most of that is associated with the remote sites. In the past two years, the link has been one-way.  The remote sites send in questions by fax, and the teacher answers them along with those from the local audience.

TEAMWORK. Running the Mini Med requires teamwork. It is essential that it be the teachers’ program; they must decide the subjects and the format and who will teach. External pressure – to include a famous investigator who’s a poor teacher, or someone’s favorite subject – must be resisted vigorously.

The other teams are from public relations and educational support services. PR does everything: invitations, publicity, admissions, mailings, food, diplomas, T-shirts. Without a great PR person as your partner, it will be difficult to manage. Educational support services provides the hall, projectionists, engineers to run the satellite links, video camera operators, fax links and remote site support. If all members of the team respect and trust each other, it will run like a dream.

Lately, based on an idea developed at another school, we had volunteer medical students (real ones) attend to help with questions, talk to the audience, and give out the "diplomas" on the last day of class. They wore buttons that said, "Ask Me! I’m a Med Student." They loved doing it. In some cases, their parents were in the audience. This past year, they got some really nice T-shirts made and sold them at graduation as a fund-raising event for the Student Council.

I hope this information is useful.  Please contact me if I can provide other details. It would be exciting if you could get your own program going, and I am sure it would be a great success. Best of luck with it.

J. John Cohen, MD, PhD
Professor of Immunology and Medicine
Mail Stop B-184
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Denver, CO 80262, USA